Outdoors: TV looks at bass legend Dottie

She was caught and released at least three different times, and each time she made a bigger splash in the wacky world of largemouth bass fishing.

She became known as Dottie, for the unmistakable black dot under her right gill plate.

Other than George Perry's 22-pound, 4-ounce world-record bass he caught in June of 1932, no black bass was written about more, photographed more or appeared on more Web sites. Dottie wasn't even a world-record catch, but she should have qualified the last two times she was caught legally, the last at 25 pounds, 1 ounce.

And now Dottie's legend will grow more tomorrow at 10 p.m. when the National Geographic Channel includes her and the three anglers who chased her at Dixon Lake in Escondido – Jed Dickerson, Mike Winn and Mac Weakley – in a special about bass fishing.

They are part of the TV show “Hooked on Bass,” which promises to detail the reasons that largemouth bass fishing is the No. 1 segment of the sport among the nation's 40 million anglers.

The show starts with the segment on Dickerson, Winn and Weakley, and how the trio went from fishing for fun at Dixon Lake to hunting big bass like Dottie. A second segment features a father and son competing in the world's largest amateur bass tournament, the 2008 Big Bass Splash in Texas. The final part shows Kevin Van Dam winning his fourth B.A.S.S. Angler of the Year title.

I'm not sure what Dottie's role is in this show. But no matter what, the old gal gets my vote for best actress in the largemouth bass category. Best bass never to be a world record.

Dottie deserved better. She deserved to be a world record, and actually was, twice. To me, that's the saddest part of her story. I'm not blaming Dickerson, Winn and Weakley for not authenticating their catches, but I'm just sayin'Dottie deserved better, deserved the official title of heaviest largemouth bass in the world.

Some would argue she already has that title after Weakley caught her at 25 pounds, 1 ounce in '06. But others will point to the International Game Fish Association record book, absent of her big number, now and forever.

But we know this.

She was Mike Long's catch at 20 pounds, 10 ounces in April 2001.

She was Jed Dickerson's Dottie at 21 pounds, 11½ ounces in 2003. Witnesses that day on the Dixon Lake dock, including supervising ranger Jim Dayberry, saw her push the certified scale to 22 pounds, 7 ounces. That would have broken Perry's legendary 22-4. It should have. But when she was weighed later, she had lost some roe and some of her most recent meal and weighed less. And for some reason, still roughly unexplained, her original weight wasn't counted.

It should have been.

And in her final dance with the record-chasing Bassbusters, Dottie, after some serious bingeing and egg-bearing, tipped the hand-held scale on the fishing dock at Dixon Lake in March of 2006 at 25 pounds, 1 ounce. But Weakley had inadvertently foul-hooked her off her spawning bed. He still could have submitted the catch as a IGFA all-tackle record, but Weakley was crushed by the controversy and didn't apply.

They all – Long, Dickerson, Weakley – have been the target of cynics who said they just recycled a trout-fed, bloated bass, took turns with her on the wheel of fortune.

But there was no fortune, and only the tiniest slice of fame.

Dottie was spotted a few times between the time Weakley released her in March of 2006 and last May, when she died. In fact, Dickerson eyeballed her and showed her to former NFL coach Dennis Green and his son, Zach. Dickerson started fishing, hoping for another shot at Dottie, another dance. A world record.

But shortly after National Geographic Channel cameras left in May last year, Dottie was found floating belly-up on the Dixon Lake shoreline. There were whispers that a poacher caught her at night. She died, so he took her from the lake, froze her, but then, for reasons all his own, dumped her back in the lake for the National Geographic cameras.

By then, Dottie had shrunk to a mere mortal, 19 pounds, a shadow of her original heftiness.